1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic publishing and, more particularly, to management of rights to materials which may be subject to copyright that may be provided over the Internet or other electronic media.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The so-called “information age” has been characterized by the increased ease of access to information over networks such as the internet and numerous businesses have developed offering the service of providing access to various types of materials through their search portals. Recently, such information has included recorded music and material which has been electronically published and, even more recently, it has been proposed to provide books which have been optically scanned to obtain an electronic file suitable for such transmission. Of course, any of these materials may be subject to copyright rights and numerous arrangements have been proposed to collect royalties for the information so provided which is subject to copyright rights, generally applying a charge for each item provided.
However, copyright rights are generally of limited duration, after which the material passes into the public domain and may be freely copied. Thus, while it may be assumed that copyright rights apply to recently created works such as recorded music and information which has been electronically published, information which was originally published in hard copy form and is optically scanned to obtain an electronic file for transmission may be of any age and possibly in the public domain. If the document is in the public domain it is desirable to avoid charges which might be considered to be improperly collected royalties while it in also necessary to observe any copyright rights which may exist.
This problem of discriminating materials which may be in the public domain and materials which may be under copyright can be quite complex and varies from country to country. Much of the complexity derives from the fact that the duration of copyrights has been extended from time to time and renewals of copyright registrations may be permitted or may have been permitted at some time in the past. While it is currently possible to optically scan materials such as printed books with relatively high throughput, the time required to determine whether particular materials are in the public domain or subject to copyright rights may present significant delays in providing the materials by electronic means such as the Internet.